‘Thomas Paine’ waits on White House

By Bob Unruh

An actor with runaway successful YouTube videos lambasting the United States, its government, officials and citizens for losing the representative government on which the nation was founded says he’s awaiting word from the White House about an “invitation” to visit.

WND reported last week on the Internet furor over reports Bob Basso, who posts videos under the name funbobbasso on YouTube, was invited to the White House because of the subject of his presentations.

He portrays Thomas Paine, author of the “Common Sense” pamphlet that made the case for independence during the American Revolution.

Basso, whose website offers his services as a motivational speaker, uses the YouTube presentations to condemn “non-representing representatives” and warns, “Only when they feel the almighty wrath of ‘We The People’ marching in the streets from California to New York shouting ‘We’re mad as hell and we want our country back’ will they get the message they work for you.”

The day after the WND report, Basso appeared on the “Jerry Doyle Show” and reported he had been receiving several hundred telephone calls a day. He said he wanted “to make it very clear to all those folks who are saying, ‘Please don’t be intimidated by our government and stand up and fight.’ I guarantee you Mr. Paine and yours truly, Mr. Bob Basso, are not timid souls and will not be intimidated by anyone.”

Basso also said he had no intention of “attacking” the president.

He said at that point he was waiting “until we get any kind of response from the White House that this is a valid invitation or its not some kind of a scheme.” He promised the Doyle show would be the first group he would contact.

He said he had heard from individuals representing themselves as the president’s “spokespeople,” or those who “work for his Internet committee.”

Basso told the radio program the smart thing is to “wait until the inviter talks to the invitee if in fact that’s valid.”

However, he said whether or not Obama is concerned by his videos, or even aware of them, the bigger issue remains the nation’s movement away from its foundation.

“This is small potatoes compared to the fact we’re losing our representative democracy,” he said. “This is very small potatoes in comparison to the tea bag revolutions going on all over the country.”

In a statement released by Basso’s associate to WND, he said he had not yet been summoned to the White House.

Jesse Edwards, a Doyle show producer, said it appears that because the “invitation” became public, the White House has let the issue drop.

“We went on the air with it. Now he hasn’t heard anything,” he told WND.

The Doyle show reaches about 3 million listeners each week, according to Talkers Magazine, and is the fastest growing show in Talk Radio Network Enterprises’ history with more than 240 stations.

In Basso’s second video, which has been seen more than 1.1 million times, he challenges people to let Congress know their displeasure by sending tea bags. It is embedded here:

He criticizes Congress for approving the “largest spending bill in history without reading it” and criticizes American citizens, because “you did nothing.”

He raises the issue of billions of dollars for benefits for illegal aliens, the exportation of U.S. jobs overseas and others.

“If your self-serving Congress were a business they’d all be in jail now,” he said.

“Wake up, America. While you were playing with the toys of your consumer wealth, you lost much more than your bloated economy of living beyond your means. You lost your representative democracy. Your servants have become your masters. Taxation without representation is tyranny,” he said.

He’s equally unhappy with Americans in the first video, embedded here:

In that piece he warns of the problem of supporting the rest of the world while America needs to be rebuilt.

Referring to “progressives,” he said, “We had another word in 1776. We called them traitors.”

Basso is the author of the best-selling book “This Job Should Be Fun” along with 10 other books, including “Lighten Up Corporate America!”

A former award winning news director for NBC TV and visiting professor at UCLA, Basso has a Ph.D in communications.


Bob Unruh

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially. Read more of Bob Unruh's articles here.